“You’d be dead before you reached the staircase.” Roman used his gun to gesture to the pilot’s seat. He did this casually, like he was motioning with his own hand instead of a deadly weapon. “Sit down. There’s no reason to be afraid.”
Dorothy held his gaze. She doubted that.
“I promise, I only want to talk.” Roman held his hands out, in surrender, and now the gun was dangling from his thumb. Dorothy knew better than to be fooled. A gun was still a gun, no matter how casually it was held. The men who treated their weapons like toys were the ones who really needed to be watched.
She sunk into the chair, hands knotting in her lap.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” The corner of Roman’s mouth twitched. He was laughing at her.
Teeth gritted, she asked, “What do you want?”
“She speaks!”
Dorothy tilted her head, saying nothing, and Roman released a deep, long-suffering sigh.
“I want to make a deal with you,” he continued. “As you’ve surely noticed, our good friend Asher has gone and gotten himself captured.”
His lips twisted around Ash’s name, as though it had an unpleasant taste.
“I’m not sure Ash would call you a friend,” Dorothy said.
“Probably not. But I’m here to help you rescue him, nonetheless.”
Dorothy could tell that he’d meant this to be shocking, so she worked hard to keep the emotion from her face.
“Why?” she asked politely. “The goodness of your heart?”
The idea of there being any goodness in his heart seemed to delight Roman. “God no,” he said, releasing a surprised laugh. “But why on earth should that stop you?”
Dorothy’s eyes shifted to the shadows at the back of the time machine. Roman had been waiting there. Somehow, he’d known that she was going to come to the time machine. He’d known that Ash was going to be led away by soldiers. He’d known all of this before it’d happened.
Are you trying to say that you’ve seen the future?
Perhaps. Perhaps I’ve even seen yours.
A prickle went up the back of her neck as she realized what was bothering her. This felt planned. Dorothy didn’t like plans she hadn’t come up with herself.
She stared at Roman’s gun. “What happens if I say no?”
“You won’t say no.”
“I already told you I didn’t want to work with you.”
“And I told you that you’d change your mind about that.”
“Why would I do that?”
Roman grinned with half his mouth. It looked wrong. Like something he’d learned from a book. “I left you a little present, back at the Fairmont hotel. You remember, don’t you? It was a small leather-bound book. Used to belong to Professor Zacharias Walker.”
Dorothy blinked. “You left it?”
“The plan was for you to steal it and bring it to Ash and his friends, so that they could read the Professor’s final entry and discover where in history their mentor had run off to.”
“You meant for them to come back here?” Dorothy’s voice sounded hollow.
“It was my idea, I confess, to use you,” Roman went on. “I stole the journal the night the Professor disappeared. I’ve always known exactly when and where he was but, without any exotic matter, I couldn’t exactly travel back in time and get him, could I? I needed Ash to do that for me. But Ash didn’t know where to look, and he wouldn’t trust any information that came from me. We needed someone to act as a go-between. So we kidnapped you, and we planted the journal where you were sure to find it. You performed splendidly, by the way.”
“Stop,” Dorothy said, but it was too late. His words had already wormed their way into her brain.
You performed splendidly.
She’d been played—they all had.
In a good con, the artist does his best to convince the mark that the game was all her idea. He dangles something tempting in front of her, something he tells her she can’t have but knows she wants. In the end, the mark begs to be tricked.
Dorothy had found the journal and assumed it was valuable. She’d stolen it, and then she’d handed it over to Ash at her first opportunity, like the perfect little patsy she was.
Her eyes grew hot and she realized, horrified, that they’d filled with tears. She blinked, determined to keep them from falling through sheer force of will. She’d never been conned before. She’d spent her whole life tricking others, getting them to trust her, to open up, and then taking them for all they were worth and leaving before they realized how foolish they’d been.
She’d never thought she might be on the other side of it.
“I still don’t understand,” she said carefully. “How are you here? Ash said you shouldn’t be able to travel back in time, unless”—she thought of the cargo hold on Ash’s ship, the one she’d hidden inside to get to the future—“did you sneak onto the Second Star?”
“Ah, that was a neat little trick but I’m afraid not.” Roman’s smile spread. “I had a much more elegant way of traveling back. Obviously I can’t tell you how I did it now, but I expect you’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Dorothy’s head was spinning. It was too much information, too many tangles to try to work out.
Voice steady, she asked, “So now what? You’re going to find the Professor before Ash does and just leave us here?”
Roman gazed at her, amused. “Dorothy,” he said carefully. “The Professor’s already gone.”
LOG ENTRY–MAY 10, 2075
23:47 HOURS
THE DARK STAR
Mission: Aphrodite 1
I’m writing from outside the anil, where I’m sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Dark Star. I need to get this all down as quickly as I can before I take the ship back in time. I’ve left the rest of the team at home. They don’t know I’m doing this. I don’t want to get Zora’s hopes up, in case I’m wrong.
Objective: Return to the morning of May 9, 2075, and retrieve Natasha Harrison from our home before it’s destroyed in the Cascadia Fault mega-quake.
I’m aware of the causal loop. Of course I’m aware of the damn causal loop.
But this is different. Natasha’s body wasn’t found in the wreckage. There’s a possibility that I’ve already traveled back in time. I’ve already saved her.
She’s not really dead.
LOG ENTRY—JUNE 18, 2075
23:41 HOURS
THE WORKSHOP
Mission: Aphrodite 22 27
So far, every attempt I’ve made to save Natasha has proven unsuccessful.
I honestly don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
At first, I tried to return to the morning of May 9, 2075. I arrived sixty minutes before the earthquake hit Seattle, figuring that would give me enough time to locate Natasha, convince her to leave with me, and return to the anil.
On my first dozen or so trips back, I looked for Natasha in our home and around our neighborhood. She’d been sick that day, remember, so it would be logical to conclude that she wouldn’t stray far. But she had not gone to any of her local haunts. Each and every time, I failed to locate her before the earthquake hit.
After those early failures, I stopped my search for a brief time to come up with a new plan. Looking for Natasha an hour before the earthquake hit was not working, so I should search earlier. The last time I saw Natasha alive was on the beach at Golden Gardens Park. She’d come to see us off. My new plan was to return to that moment, to intercept her in the few minutes between her saying farewell to me and leaving to an unknown location in her vehicle.
Unfortunately, when I attempt to exit the anil at this moment, I find myself surfacing in the sound approximately fifteen minutes after we leave, at which point Natasha has already climbed into her car and driven away from the beach.
It is an odd blip of the time tunnel, and, were things different, I might attempt to research the phenomenon further.
As it is, my only thoughts are of finding my wife.<
br />
LOG ENTRY—NOVEMBER 4, 2075
02:13 HOURS
THE WORKSHOP
Mission: Aphrodite 53
It’s been four months since I last updated.
No, wait—five months.
It’s strange that, for someone who’s spent his whole life studying time, I have such a poor grasp of it. It seems like it’s been much longer than that, and also like time is moving far, far too slowly.
I have since searched for my wife at the supermarket, the university library, the pharmacy, Natasha’s doctor’s office, and her mother’s house. I went back hours earlier, and I stayed as late as I could possibly manage. Sometimes I only made it to the anil seconds before the earthquake hit.
I’ve gone over my original theory again and again, examining it from every angle. Even with the causal loop, it still makes sense. Natasha cannot be dead.
You see, I’m not actually saving her life, I’m taking her out of the past and bringing her here, just like we did with Ash and Chandra and Willis. I’m removing her from the past before the earthquake can kill her.
Why isn’t this working?
LOG ENTRY—FEBRUARY 18, 2076
11:04 HOURS
THE WORKSHOP
Mission: Aphrodite 87
The downtown library is one of Natasha’s favorite places in the city. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. When she isn’t feeling well she always goes down to the library and finds the biggest, dustiest old biography or memoir she can and loses herself in its pages until she feels better.
I have now tried to get inside the library on five different missions, but I was prevented from reaching my destination each and every time.
During my last trip, I made it up the steps of the library and was just about to reach out and open the door, when a man ran directly into me, knocking me backward. I woke up inside an ambulance twenty minutes later, and I had to force my way back out and onto the street, and then race back to my time machine, all the while bleeding from a head wound, in order to get to the anil before the earthquake hit.
My current theory is that Natasha is inside that library. It’s the only thing that makes sense. If I can just find a way to get inside without anything else going wrong, I’ll be able to bring her home.
LOG ENTRY—MAY 9, 2076
19:07 HOURS
THE WORKSHOP
I don’t know how I’m writing this.
I mean that literally. I’m staring down at my hand and I don’t understand how it’s moving. The words it’s writing don’t seem to be mine.
How could they be?
My mind is blank. Numb. Empty.
Natasha’s body was found today. Some volunteers were clearing out debris from the downtown library in the hopes that the top few floors would be livable.
I—I can’t write out what they told me about the state of her body. They were able to identify her from her driver’s license, which was tucked inside the remains of her pocket and listed her home address. They brought it to me, and they told me where I could find her, if I would like to give her a proper burial.
I was right, all along. She was in the library. But I couldn’t reach her. If only I could’ve reached her. It’s been a year. I’ve tried to save my wife a hundred times, in a hundred different ways. But nothing works.
Natasha dies, every single time.
34
Ash
MARCH 17, 1980, FORT HUNTER COMPLEX
“Join your friend,” the soldier said, with one last gleeful jab of his gun. Ash stumbled forward, nearly tripping over the metal chair bolted to the floor in the middle of the interrogation room.
He felt something jagged in his gut. Fear, or the beginning of it.
He sat down, careful not to look at Zora. The soldier knelt behind him, removed his handcuffs, and recuffed him to the bolted-down chair. Satisfied, he joined the other soldiers at the door and, without another word, they stepped back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind them. They were alone.
Ash’s eyes slid to Zora. “Are you—”
The sound of footsteps cut him off. He heard mumbled voices in the hallway, and then the door opened, again, and a new, unfamiliar soldier walked into the room.
He wasn’t dressed in fatigues but wore a green jacket over a khaki shirt and tie, his hat tucked under one arm. He had the face of a bulldog, but his eyes were flat and black, like a shark’s.
Ash’s eyes flicked to the man’s shoulder straps, checking his rank. Twin silver oak leaves stared back at him.
Ash’s throat felt suddenly dry. Those leaves marked this man as the commander of the entire base.
“My name is Lieutenant Colonel Gross,” the man said after a moment. “My unit has informed me that there’s been a serious breach in our security.”
He stared at Ash, as though he expected him to answer.
Ash stared back. He could feel blood pumping in his ears, hot and steady, and realized, in a detached sort of way, that this was panic. He was panicking.
Before he could come up with anything to say, there was a short knock, and the door opened, again. Two more soldiers walked in, pushing a boxy television on a metal cart.
“I aim to make this quite simple for you,” Gross continued. “You all are barely older than children, and I don’t like harming children. But, as this is a matter of national security, I may have no other choice.”
He flipped a switch on the television and a grainy, black-and-white image flickered across the screen:
The Professor was racing up a flight of stairs, chest heaving. He reached a metal door and paused to look over his shoulder. The overhead lights glinted off his glasses, turning them white.
Gross pressed a button on the television set, and the image froze.
“This video was taken early this morning, at approximately 0400 hours. The gentleman you see on the screen broke into our facility undetected, somehow managing to procure top secret information on a weapon of mass destruction.”
Weapon of mass destruction? Ash thought.
What did the Professor want with a weapon?
But Gross was already moving on, and Ash didn’t have time to think about that too hard.
“It is our belief that he is working against the United States government and, as such, his actions constitute an act of war.” Gross turned to Ash, black eyes narrowing. “You, young man, were discovered inside the gentleman’s aircraft, which we found abandoned in the woods just outside the complex. You can see why that might lead us to believe that you, too, are working against the United States government. If you were to cooperate, if you were to tell us who this man was and which agency he was working for, we might be persuaded to be lenient, as far as your own punishment were concerned.”
Ash’s blood ran cold. He swallowed. “Was?”
Gross didn’t blink. “The gentleman in question was found on the roof about fifteen minutes ago, trying to escape. He’s been executed.”
35
Dorothy
“Gone?” Dorothy repeated, cold flooding through her. “How can he be gone? We’re standing in his time machine!”
“Never mind that now.” Roman leaned against the time-machine wall, arms crossed casually over his chest, gun dangling from his fingers. “There’s something else that I need to obtain from this place. It’s the last piece of a very specific puzzle, and, believe it or not, you’re the only person alive who can get it for me.”
Dorothy narrowed her eyes. “Why do you think I would help you?”
“Because I know how to free Ash, and you don’t.”
Dorothy hesitated, pulse fluttering. Blast.
She had a sneaking suspicion that she was being conned again. But Roman seemed to have a plan for getting Ash back, and she didn’t even know where the soldiers had taken him. She needed Roman. For now, at least.
And there was the small matter of her vision. It felt . . . close, if that made any sense at all. Her skin prickled with the anticipation of it.
You shouldn’t trust them, Dorothy thought.
Why? she wanted to ask. Why shouldn’t I trust Ash and his friends?
She had to admit that the vision had made it seem like they were working together. And it was easier to choose to work with Roman when it felt inevitable. A decision she’d already weighed and made. A future she couldn’t avoid.
She studied his face. “And you’ll let us go once we’re through?”
Roman’s eyebrow arced upward, pulled by an invisible string. “Naturally.”
He was lying. But her eyes moved to the gun in his hand, and she realized she’d never really had a choice either way. Only the illusion of one.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “So what is this thing I’m helping you get?”
Roman flicked the question away with a jerk of his hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll know it when you see it. For now, we need to focus on Ash. It’s very important that we help him escape. He’s the only one who can fly you all back.”
Roman removed something from the inner pocket of his coat. It was a small contraption, not unlike Willis’s computer, but bulkier, with bits of wire twisting off the sides and a metallic stick protruding from one end. Several of the panels were different colors, and a sort of shiny, silver fabric had been wound around the bottom.
Roman leaned forward, angling the device so Dorothy could see. Several dozen tiny films played across the screen at once.
“I rerouted the complex’s security feed to send the images here,” Roman explained. He tapped one of the tiny films, and it expanded to take up the entire screen. Now the image showed Ash and Zora sitting in the middle of a small room, apparently bound to their seats. “This is a few floors down, Room 321A.”
Dorothy’s nerves hummed. She itched to touch the screen but held herself back. “So let’s go.”
Roman gave her a pained look. “If it were that easy, do you think I’d need you?” He pulled up another image, this one of several dozen armed soldiers standing at attention in front of a door. “This is the scene right outside your boy’s room.”
Dorothy’s lips burned, remembering their kiss. “He’s not my—”
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